Saturday, February 3, 2018

I am starting to think that anti-racism
is more of a problem than racism these days. Because of the
anti-racism movement, many persons, who most certainly possess good
will to all people of good will regardless of race or ethnicity, are
being unfairly persecuted because they are not willing to be blind or
lie about the bad things that people, who don't have a white hue of
skin, will unfortunately do. In fact, the so-called anti-racists
today have given up on the ideas of judging a person merely on the
content of their character and their actions, and of trying to ignore
their ethnicity or race.

The anti-racists have become in fact
the sort of people they purport to hate.

* * * * *

Is China is the best country in the
world to be?

Arguments for: Economic potential.

Arguments against: It's government.

* * * * *

I am stopping at zebra crossings to let
pedestrians cross. It is not a common practice in China, or at least
in the neck of the woods I inhabit in China. Chinese drivers will
not yield to pedestrians unless the pedestrian has a claim on space.
Driving in China I have had to stop yielding to pedestrians. But
now, I have to adopt this habit because it is the right thing to do
and because you can be now be fined if you don't. However, many of
the local pedestrians aren't used to cars stopping for them and so I
often stop and frustratingly watch a pedestrian hesitate and hesitate
before crossing. Sometimes I have to give up on them and leave them
standing on the curb.

One morning, I was driving on Hui Shan
Da Dao, a busy three lane either-way road, and saw a woman standing,
waiting to cross a zebra crossing. I was in the left most lane when
I stopped for her. She hesitated to cross. Part of her hesitation
was understandable because cars in the other lane weren't slowing
down. After a few seconds, she did try to cross. But as she walked
in front of my car, a van that was stopped behind me couldn't wait
and quickly passed on my right, scaring the woman back onto the curb.
I finally gave up on her and continued on my way.

Local pedestrians have to learn to be
aggressive when crossing. They have to take the mindset that it is
their right to cross at the zebra crossings and cars have to stop for
them. That is what I do and I have often passed hesitant local
pedestrians who end up following me across the street.

* * * * *

To drive a mini-van in China, it seems
to me that you need a special license which you can only get by
failing an IQ test.

* * * * *

Slush in Wuxi. [In the first week of
January.]

* * * * *

Steve Bannon. It looks like he is
feuding with Trump. Sad. It had my instinct to defend Bannon but it
seems that though he is probably ideologically sound, he has made
some political mistakes.

* * * * *

I was at the subway station, about to
put my bag on the x-ray machine belt when a woman hurriedly came from
behind, reached around me and put her handbag on the belt in front of
my bag. I screamed “Bitch!” at her a couple times without
getting a reaction. But I had the satisfaction of passing her at the
entry gates because she had problems having the scanner read her
metro pass.

* * * * *

Tony & I saw the Last Jedi movie on
a weekend morning (I won't say which one.) As I watched it, I could
see the movie was flawed. I also had the sensation of it being long.
Coming out of the cinema afterwards and if someone had asked me, I
would have said that the film was okay but...

I very much objected to Yoda taking a
stab at Luke Skywalker for keeping old texts. And thinking about it
afterwards, I think the movie has a Maoist tinge to it with its
characters talking about destroying the past and with what seemed a
blatant appeal to Chinese sensibilities with having a Chinese looking
character.

There was also the need to have female
characters and characters of color appear.

Tony meanwhile thought the film was the
best Star Wars movie ever. Or at least better than The Force Awakens
and Rogue One.

* * * * *

We have a parking space in our
apartment complex which is a good thing because parking spots in the
complex are precious.

The parking spot we have had (and
hopefully still have) has been good to us. It is not too far from
our apartment and affords us quick exit from the complex.

However, this may change. Typically in
China, bad things can happen unpredictably, arbitrarily and without
warning. One Sunday evening we drove to our parking spot to find
someone parking his giant SUV in it. When Jenny asked him what he
was doing, he said he had paid for the spot with the security office
the day before. In the parlance of this day and age, it was a WTF
moment for us. At that moment, we parked the car in the usual spot,
and Tony & I went home leaving Jenny to hash the matter out.

After ten tense minutes, she came home
and told me that the security had made a mistake and rented the SUV
driver the wrong spot. I felt relief and thanked God for the way the
whole incident timed out. If we had been ten minutes earlier or
later, we really would have been screwed.

But then the next day, the security
phoned Jenny and asked her if we could move our car to a spot two
spaces over (leftwards) from where we were parking. They wanted to
give the guy our spot because that was the deal they had made and the
money had been paid.

This wouldn't be such a problem except
for the pillars. Our spot, #90, has a pillar on the passenger side
blocking the passenger side front door; the other spot at which they
would like us to park, #92, has a pillar on the driver's side. I
initially thought that the #92 pillar would block the driver door on
our car, but after checking I saw this was not the case and that I
would be able to get out of the car easily. However, having #90's
pillar to back up by makes parking and backing up easy for us, and we
are used to it. If we switch to #92, we will have to back up in a
different way, and if there is a car occupying the #91 space as we do
so, it will be an annoyance. And for the large SUV, it would make
sense to have the #92 spot because its width would make it hard for
even the driver to get out of the vehicle if a car is parked in the
#91 spot.

[The end result was that the driver of
the big SUV decided to take the #92 spot.]

* * * * *

It's January 9th and I feel
foreboding because I have read on the Internet that the Chicoms are
going to completely shut down all VPNs by January 11th. I
cross my fingers and hope that my VPN router will still be able to do
the trick. It has been working well recently so a complete block by
the GFW will be a big blow to my psyche as well as Tony's.

Jenny doesn't care and probably won't
put up with my moaning about it.

[As January ends, our VPN is working
fine.]

* * * * *

I parallel-parked my car behind a van
which then drove off about thirty seconds later. This left a parking
space in front of my car. I wondered if there was enough space in
front of me for a car to easily park because many locals can't
parallel-park for shit. And then I saw a white Ford sedan, long like
a boat, try to park in that space. I decided to watch, concerned
that the Ford might strike my car.

What I witnessed was annoying. The car
actually was parked fine on its first attempt to get in the space,
but the driver then pulled out and tried again to park in the space
and again and again and again and again.... Five minutes passed and
I was annoyed to a frothing rage.... The driver was female, and as I
learned from a passerby, a new driver. I could only think of how
“new” wasn't the word I would have used to describe the woman's
driver status and how the word I would have used to have described
her would have started with a “C.”

* * * * *

Tony said to me “I want to be a
soldier.”

“Which army?” I asked him,
“Canadian or Chinese?”

He replied Canadian which was nice but
I pointed out to him that the Chinese would probably have more modern
equipment.

If only I could find a way for Tony to
join the American army.

* * * * *

I witnessed an e-bike rudely cut off
another e-bike as I was walking to my school. The two e-bikes were
practically side by side when the e-bike on the right-hand side
decided to make a quick left turn. The e-bike on the left hand side
had to quickly apply his brakes and it was the screeching of them
that got my attention. It was as a blatant a cut-off as I had ever
seen. I looked for a reaction from the e-biker who had been cut off.
With a cigarette hanging from his lip, the cut-off e-biker's face
was typical Chinese inscrutable, but he the looked back at the other
e-bike.

* * * * *

The best part of The Last Jedi movie,
for me, has been listening to the reaction. Many hated it and many
liked it, like Tony. I find myself agreeing with Jonah Goldberg who
was in between. He said the movie was not great but it was better
than the prequels and had some good things in it.

* * * * *

Thinking to see the movie again. I
asked Tony. He said yes. Now, we have to see what Jenny says. [She
said no.]

* * * * *

Is Haiti a s***hole? Most certainly.

Does America need more immigrants from
this and other s***holes? Probably not. These countries need to
keep their human capital.

Is immigration an answer to the problem
of places being s***holes? Debatable.

* * * * *

Tony said to me “Hitler had a
Japanese mustache!” and I was first thinking Tony says the
darnedest things. But it got me to thinking some about about his
living in China, where he is exposed to lots of TV WWII
dramatizations of Chinese fighting Japanese with mustaches under
their noses; and so he would think that.

It was only recently that I thought of
some of the Japanese as having Hitler mustaches.

* * * * *

Tony says he wants to go
to Finland because that is where Santa Claus lives.

Not everything he says
excites me.

* * * * *

So much reading I do that
I can't think of anything original to say. So in the middle of
January 2018, I feel like my mind is a desert.

* * * * *

Am I happier because I
became a conservative? Yes.

* * * * *

Trump is more likely to be
Joan Crawford than a racist. In fact, he is less racist than all his
detractors, especially those who say he is a racist.

* * * * *

If Trump is crazy, how
would you describe the media that he is denouncing? It seems to me
that they are off their duff....

* * * * *

Some inspirational quotes:

We never know what we
want. So, if you think you want something, you shouldn't want it
unless you are thinking that you really don't want it.

Prefer the
paradoxical to the rational.

There is only one
worse thing than not getting what you want; that is getting what you
want.

When should you feel
most uncomfortable? When you feel comfortable.

The only thing worse
than being uncomfortable is being comfortable.

Don't be friends with
people you get along with. They will only make you feel comfortable
and thus weaken you.

Pain is good for you
because it makes you stronger. Therefore, you should walk barefoot
on broken glass at least once a day.

There is only one
thing worse than not being taken seriously, that is being taken
seriously.

We should take our
silliness seriously and our seriousness sillily.

Smile on the outside,
frown on the inside or vice versa because you don't want to threaten
people with your authenticity.

People can't bear the
truth; but they also can't bear lies that they think are untrue
because others might think they are true.

We should be blind to
color except when it is trying to tell us something.

You can't put a camel
through the eye of a needle unless you have a really big needle or a
very small camel.

Don't overthink
things or under-think things while always being aware that you are
probably thinking about them wrongly.

Don't let humility
turn you into an overbearing egotist.

What are three assets
we really don't need? Cynicism, seriousness, pedantry and an
ability to count.

Is
it better to have tried hard and failed, or to have had a relaxing
afternoon of not having ventured and failed?

If
you make less things, you will eventually have less things to
repair.

Maybe,
I should say these quotes are perspirational. Not meant to inspire
but to make you sweat.

*
* * * *

The
Wuxi 2018 Snow Live Blog:

January
24: Yesterday, I learned of a forecast that called for two days of
blizzard conditions in Wuxi starting tonight. I was worried about
the prospect of my having to drive Tony to school with snow and
stupid drivers with no experience of driving in snow, and of Jenny
picking up Tony in such conditions. The fretting lasted about all of
three hours until a student in the evening told me that the schools
were going to be closed for those two days. This news gave me so
much relief and I became filled with exhilaration.

January
25: Yesterday evening, there was snow in the air as I walked home
from the subway station. I saw snow collecting on car exteriors.
After getting home, snow started collecting on the ground. Looking
out the window of Casa K this morning, I saw a lot of snow on trees,
grasses and bushes but the roads looked pretty good which makes the
decision to preemptively close the schools look incorrect. Still, a
snow day for Tony! I am happy even though I have to go to work.

January
25 later: This snow has fallen almost ten years to the date of the
great Wuxi snow of 2008 which you can see video of on my Youtube
channel. So far, less snow than 2008.

January
25: I am at school. There is snow collecting in the downtown as
snow falls. I just got a coffee at the 85 Bakery and the place was
empty. Perhaps, everybody is staying home, not going anywhere.
Annoying thing: the zipper on the winter jacket I bought ten years
ago has busted, but at least I have velcro to keep the jacket
together.

January
26: It snowed last night and so work has been slow on account of no
students coming to school. I might as well have gone home at 17:00
yesterday but there was a student who thought that he could drive
forty minutes to school and have a two hour class from 19:00 to
21:00. I realized he was crazy when I went outside at dinner time
and saw that the streets were very messy. And then I got word that
he had cancelled and so I had to think more of his sanity that I had
been. If this sort of weather happened in Winnipeg, there would have
been no need to cancel school but this being Wuxi, which is not used
to snow, it was a good thing that the decision was made. I heard on
social media that there had been 6,000 accidents in Wuxi yesterday.
I was sure if I could believe this because I hadn't seen any
accidents in my travels to and from home to work.

January
26 evening: I hear that it is supposed to snow again on the 27th.
I read that schools will be closed on the 29th and 30th
(Monday and Tuesday). Tony and I like this; Jenny does not.

January
27 early: I leave home early. The roads, I see, are dry with piles
of snow or frozen patches. It is not snowing. I take the subway to
downtown. Coming out of the station, I see snow is starting to fall.

January
27 (Saturday) at work: Saturday and I was supposed to be teaching
the kiddies. I come to work and am told immediately that my classes
with them have been cancelled. There is a 13:00 private class that I
will teach if Roy (Roy Boy!!) actually attends.

January
30 (Tuesday. (Sunday and Monday were days off.)): The rest of
Saturday, the city was a mess because it snowed heavily, and the
streets and sidewalks were very slushy. I spent my days not driving
the car and mostly sitting at home. Sunday, I took Tony downtown
via the bus and subway. For Tony, it was a chance to experience
snow. He had never seen so much of it before.

It
was cold last night. This morning, I started the car up and it
didn't start so easily. That sound of the ignition turning over was
a sound I hadn't heard in years. When I arrived at work, I talked to
a Chinese colleague who I knew had a car and she told me that she had
the same problem starting her car. It scared her, she told me, and I
told her what it was like in cold weather in Canada and how we needed
booster cables, things which I don't think they have in southern
China.

*
* * * *

Am
I a Roundhead or a Cavalier? I suspect I am a Cavalier and, while
you are at it, a Jacobin.

*
* * * *

Because
of the snow, I told some of the students and Chinese co-workers, nine
months from January 26, October 26 could be a busy day. They didn't
get my joke.

*
* * * *

My
new passport! My new, expires in ten year, passport is here!!!

*
* * * *

I
took Tony to the Subway sandwich shop at Sanyang Plaza. As I
suspected, he liked a sandwich heated with bacon, spicy Italian
sausage and Cheese, with Ketchup added afterwards. The sandwich
maker couldn't believe that Tony didn't want any vegetables on it.
The sparseness of ingredients on the sandwich made it seem very
expensive: 60 rmb. I can understand the stories I have read on the
Internet of the chain starting to fail in North America.

*
* * * *

It
is lonely life I lead in Wuxi for which there are many reasons.
Major reason, I suppose, is that my kind is not here. But then I
never meet my kind in Canada. And there so are probably disagreeable
things about my personage...

Friday, January 26, 2018

AKIC

I am Canadian. I have lived in Wuxi, China since September 2004. I teach English. In this blog, I recount the things I have seen and the experiences I have had here in Wuxi. I also make comments on things that strike my reactionary fancy.